Live coverage / Trump and Biden pick up wins as votes counted in Florida
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The race for the presidency is usually decided in a small number of key battleground states that switch party allegiance between elections.
91%
91%
| Candidate | Votes | Percent | |
Donald Trump | 5,617,645 | 51.3% | |
Joe Biden | 5,235,443 | 47.8% | |
Jo Jorgensen | 68,626 | 0.6% |
Why does it matter?
Florida has voted with the eventual winner in all but one presidential election since 1964. It is also the swing state with the largest population and the most electoral college votes.
31%
31%
| Candidate | Votes | Percent | |
Donald Trump | 1,075,787 | 51.8% | |
Joe Biden | 941,763 | 45.4% | |
Jo Jorgensen | 58,210 | 2.8% |
Why does it matter?
Pennsylvania was one of the largest states to swing to Trump in the 2016 election. He won the state by a margin of just 0.7 percentage points, turning it Republican for the first time since 1992.
80%
80%
| Candidate | Votes | Percent | |
Donald Trump | 2,469,381 | 52.1% | |
Joe Biden | 2,207,916 | 46.6% | |
Jo Jorgensen | 50,398 | 1.1% |
Why does it matter?
Ohio is one of the largest swing states in the midwest, and it has sided with the eventual election winner for decades. Trump won the state by a margin of over eight points in 2016.
56%
56%
| Candidate | Votes | Percent | |
Donald Trump | 1,546,826 | 55.4% | |
Joe Biden | 1,213,435 | 43.4% | |
Jo Jorgensen | 32,776 | 1.2% |
Why does it matter?
Long a Republican stronghold, southern Georgia has recently become more of a battleground state due to its growing black electorate. In the 2018 governor’s election, Republican Brian Kemp defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams by just 1.4 percentage points.
Americans are also electing members to the two chambers of Congress, the main law-making body of the US. Those chambers are the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Without support in the Senate and the House, the president’s ability to enact key policies is severely limited.
Full Senate and House results
The winner of the election is determined through a system called the electoral college. Each of the 50 states, plus Washington DC, is given a number of electoral college votes, adding up to a total of 538 votes. More populous states get more electoral college votes than smaller ones.
A candidate needs to win 270 electoral college votes (50% plus one) to win the election.
In every state except two – Maine and Nebraska – the candidate that gets the most votes wins all of the state’s electoral college votes.
Due to these rules, a candidate can win the election without getting the most votes at the national level. This happened at the last election, in which Donald Trump won a majority of electoral college votes although more people voted for Hillary Clinton across the US.
How are the results reported?
The election results on this page are reported by the Associated Press (AP). AP “call” the winner in a state when they determine that the trailing candidate has no path to victory. This can happen before 100% of votes in a state have been counted.
Estimates for the total vote in each state are also provided by AP. The numbers update throughout election night, as more data on voter turnout becomes available.
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